Posted By:
Steve Parcell
Category:
Detoxification
Recently, I have been fielding a lot of questions about heavy metals in chocolate (often referred to as heavy toxins). Food safety can be a depressing topic. Rice has arsenic, most fish contain mercury (some more than others), shrimp have arsenic, leafy greens take up cadmium from the soil, about 30% of the tap water in the US contains lead, and many foods are contaminated with pesticides, molds, and other heavy metals. As many of you have heard, some brands of chocolate tested by Consumer Reports contained alarming levels of lead and cadmium. “Consumer reports tested 28 dark chocolate bars for lead and cadmium. To determine the risk posed by the chocolates in CR’s test, we used California's maximum allowable dose level (MADL) for lead (0.5 micrograms) and cadmium (4.1mcg)” You can ask a chocolate company to provide third-party testing to see the lead and cadmium levels. Because there are no federal limits on the amount of lead and cadmium that foods may contain, scientists at Consumer Reports used California’s maximum allowable dose level. They did this because they felt as though it was the most scientifically valid. Rather than list all the brands including the levels of lead and...